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Updated: May 16, 2025
Hsiang-lien felt amused and angry with him, but forthwith giving his horse also the rein, he followed in his track, while Hsueeh P'an continued to stare ahead. The moment he turned back, he unawares caught sight of Hsiang-lien, and his spirits rose within him, as if he had got hold of some precious thing of an extraordinary value.
But Lai Ta had invited as well a number of officials, still in active service, and numerous young men of wealthy families, to keep them company. Among that party figured one Liu Hsiang-lien, whom Hsueeh P'an had met on a previous occasion and kept ever since in constant remembrance.
This Liu Hsiang-lien was, in fact, a young man of an old family; but he had been unsuccessful in his studies, and had lost his father and mother.
But when Hsiang-lien perceived that the country ahead of them was already thinly settled and saw besides a stretch of water covered with a growth of weeds, he speedily dismounted, and tied his horse to a tree. Turning then round; "Get down!" he said, laughingly, to Hsueeh P'an.
"Ai!" ejaculated Hsueeh P'an. "My dear senior brother!" he exclaimed. Hsiang-lien then gave him two more whacks, one after the other. "Ai Yo!" Hsueeh P'an precipitately screamed. "My dear Sir, do spare me, an eyeless beggar; and henceforth I'll look up to you with veneration; I'll fear you!" "Drink two mouthfuls of that water!" shouted Hsiang-lien.
I must now leave you." "After all the difficulty we've had in meeting," Pao-yue remarked, "wouldn't it be better were you and I to go away together in the evening?" "That worthy cousin of yours," Hsiang-lien rejoined, "is as bad as ever, and were I to stay any longer, trouble would inevitably arise. So it's as well that I should clear out of his way." Pao-yue communed with himself for a time.
But pray sit a while! If you do so, it will be a proof of your regard for me! Don't flurry yourself. With such a senior brother as myself to stand by you, it will be as easy a job for you to become an official as to reap a fortune." The sight of his repulsive manner filled the heart of Hsiang-lien with disgust and shame. But speedily devising a plan, he drew him to a secluded spot.
"Do please," he cried, "lay up a store of meritorious acts for yourself and let me off! I couldn't take that were I even on the verge of death!" "This kind of stench will suffocate me!" Hsiang-lien observed, and, with this remark, he abandoned Hsueeh Pan to his own devices; and, pulling his horse, he put his foot to the stirrup, and rode away.
With these words, he fetched his whip, and administered him, thirty or forty blows from his back down to his shins. Hsueeh P'an had sobered down considerably from the effects of wine, and found the stings of pain so intolerable, that little able to restrain himself, he gave way to groans. "Do you go on in this way?" Hsiang-lien said, with an ironical smile.
But about this time a fruit shop happened to open, and Hsueeh P'an strained at first every nerve to rise to his feet, when another slight kick from Hsiang-lien tumbled him over again. "Both parties should really be agreeable," he shouted. "But if you were not disposed to accept my advances, you should have simply told me in a proper way. And why did you beguile me here to give me a beating?"
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